

Fishing Rod

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Fishing Rod
Fishing Rod.png
Apply various bait to this, and then use when sitting on a chair or bench to catch some fish!
Type Tool
Ammo used Sap
Leech Blood
Giant Bee Honey
Unicorn Residue Logo Mobile.png
Ancient Amber Logo Mobile.png
Ranged damage 10 / 10 / 10 / 10 / 10
Weight 10.0
Stack Size 1
Durability 100
Single use Yes
Added in v245.0
Spawn Command
cheat GFI Fishing 1 0 0
cheat giveitem "Blueprint'/Game/PrimalEarth/CoreBlueprints/Weapons/PrimalItem_WeaponFishingRod.PrimalItem_WeaponFishingRod'" 1 0 0
Required level Level 18
Engram Points 15 EP
Crafting XP 18 XP
Crafting Time 10s
Crafted in Inventory
50 × Fiber.png Fiber
20 × Thatch.png Thatch
Purchase (Mobile)
Item Quality Journeyman, Ascendant
Purchased in Outpost Logo Mobile.png
Cost 50 ×  Slips Logo Mobile.png
100 ×  Slips Logo Mobile.png

The Fishing Rod is an item used to catch fish and other rewards.

Usage[edit | edit source]

In order to use the Fishing Rod, you must sit on a Wooden Chair, Wooden Bench, or Pelagornis in the water. You also need to have some bait according to the following table. Different bait types determine the type and size of the fish you are able to catch.

Bait Catchable Fish Max Fish Size
Sap Coelacanth 0.94
Leech Blood Coelacanth, Sabertooth Salmon, Piranha 1.88
Giant Bee Honey Coelacanth, Sabertooth Salmon, Piranha 2.4
Unicorn Residue Logo Mobile.png Leedsichthys N/A
Ancient Amber Logo Mobile.png Coelacanth, Sabertooth Salmon, Piranha

Find a body of water with either Coelacanth, Sabertooth Salmon, or Piranha visible below the surface. Drag your bait onto the fishing rod to equip it and set up your chair or bench in a position where you are facing a large concentration of them. Use the Fishing Rod from either your inventory or hotbar, aim at the water, cast it out (default Lmb) and wait for a fish to bite. In order to bite, a fish has to be in the attract radius for 20 to 42 seconds when using Sap and 45 to 90 seconds when using Leech Blood.

Once a fish bites your bait, it will initiate a quicktime event, and you must press all the keys that pop up on your screen within up to 21 seconds. The keys that pop up will be randomly chosen from Q, W, E, A, S, D, Z, X, C, which are all left-handed keys on a qwerty keyboard. The distance from you to the fish does not affect the number of button presses needed, but the size of the fish does - larger fish need more presses. The number of presses is always a multiple of 4.

Successfully pressing the correct buttons will result in the disappearance of the fish and the appearance of items in your inventory along with a message indicating that the fish has been reeled in. Pressing any button other than indicated or running out of time will result in the line snapping, losing the fish and the bait.

Pressing Rmb, opening your inventory, or standing up from the chair at any time while the line is cast will abort the fishing, losing the bait and any fish that might be attached. However, you can press K to look around without aborting fishing.

You cannot repair the Fishing Rod. Also Fishing Rods from Blueprints can only be crafted three times.

Rewards[edit | edit source]

In addition to Raw Fish Meat and Raw Prime Fish Meat, resources and blueprints can be caught from fish. Bigger fish have a higher chance of yielding these, while smaller quality fish may just give meat.

Each species of fish has its own bait co-efficient value tables. Coel give a lower multiplier than Salmon, resulting in Salmon rewarding better loot from higher loot quality tiers. One should make effort to fish Salmon over Coel whenever possible.
Each of the three bait types have their own individual co-efficient values. Leech Blood has the highest, followed by Honey and Sap is last. However, Honey can catch bigger Fish than Leech Blood. This means you should only use Honey for fish that are too large to catch with Leech Blood.

  • Quality range: 100% - 100%
  • The crate consists of exactly 1 of the following tier sets.

The tier set "(unnamed)" consists of exactly 2 of the following item entries.

fish meat - Chance 70%
The item entry "fish meat" contains exactly 10 of the following items.
as item or as blueprint
prime fish meat - Chance 20%
The item entry "prime fish meat" contains exactly 5 of the following items.
as item or as blueprint

  • Quality range: 100% - 100%
  • The crate contains of exactly 1 of the following tier sets.

The tier set "(unnamed)" contains of at least and at most 3 of the following item entries.

prime meat - Chance 11%
The item entry "prime meat" contains of exactly 2 of the following items.
as item or as blueprint
rare resources - Chance 6%
The item entry "rare resources" contains of at least 4 and at most 6 of the following items.
as item or as blueprint
common resources - Chance 20%
The item entry "common resources" contains of at least 4 and at most 8 of the following items.
as item or as blueprint
High Tier BPs - Chance 3%
The item entry "High Tier BPs" contains of exactly 1 of the following items.
only as blueprint
BP Weapons - Chance 10%
The item entry "BP Weapons" contains of exactly 1 of the following items.
only as blueprint
BP Armor - Chance 10%
The item entry "BP Armor" contains of exactly 1 of the following items.
only as blueprint
Saddle BPs - Chance 10%
The item entry "Saddle BPs" contains of exactly 1 of the following items.
only as blueprint

Notes[edit | edit source]

  • Currently, 2.6 is the biggest catchable fish size. Before Patch 259.0, it was possible to catch fish with a size of 3.0+ and greater using Giant Bee Honey. Before 257.0, the largest catchable fish size was 2.9 using Leech Blood.
  • All fish sizes are rounded up to the neared 0.1 value. This results in final loot tier formulas that may have variance, even of the fish you are catching appear to be identical in size. Two 1.5 fish may give different final values even while using exactly the same fishing rod and exactly the same bait, and rounded numbers are the reason.
  • The final formula you see after catching a fish determines the loot quality tier of the items you receive. Loot quality tier determines many factors: it determines the average color quality of the blueprints you receive, and it also determines the overall margins those blueprints can roll. Higher loot tiers mean larger margins, meaning weapons as high as 500%+ damage or more and saddles that can reach upwards of 250+ armor. All of these items are affected by the server restart item clamp, but they can still be fished up and used before this happens. Loot quality tier will also determine the amount of fish meat, prime fish meat and basic resources you receive as well. The formula for determining what loot quality tier you reach is the fishing rod effectiveness times the size of the fish times the bait co-efficient value of the bait you're using. This means in order to catch the best loot possible, you will want to use your highest quality fishing rod, and catch the largest fish you can using the best bait for the situation.
  • By putting a chair on a Wooden Raft you can create a mobile fishing station, however if a tribe member moves the raft while you fish the line will snap.
  • A Quetzal Platform, Mosasaurus Platform or Paracer Platform Saddle will not work for fishing, you can't select the Fishing Rod..
  • You can also use 'k mode' (toggle orbit camera) while fishing, the randomly chosen key prompts will still display, but item collect messages and death messages will not unless you press 'backspace' (toggle HUD) twice. This will let you see fish levels, multipliers, and loot.
  • It is theorized that Alpha Tusoteuthis drop Fishing Rods 100% of the time while Alpha Mosas drop them at a 20% chance. Alpha Tusoteuthis also have a higher chance to drop rarer rods due to their higher base quality for their drops.
  • On ARK: Survival Evolved Mobile you can only get blueprints by fishing a big fish with Amber.

Gallery[edit | edit source]

Footage of the Fishing Mechanic. v.245.94